DAW Like a Console
On a music production technique / mindset that I like.
This is my first “audio-heavy” post, possibly interesting to those involved in music production: recording, mixing, and mastering engineers, producers, musicians, etc. However, others may enjoy this glimpse into a tiny part of the process. The online audio and music production space is filled with people telling you how to do certain things (“here is how you get a FAT snare sound!”) and I want to avoid that vibe here. Rather than instruct, I would like to share something that works for me and gets me excited about music creation.
When I first started to learn how to mix, I was encouraged by my mentors to approach it with an “analog” mindset: Imagine your DAW (digital audio workstation - Pro Tools, Ableton, Logic, Garageband, etc.) is a tape machine, output all of your tracks from your DAW to a mixing console individually, and process using channel EQ and compression, and outboard gear. Maybe sub-mix something down, like all of your rhythm guitar tracks - if this saved space and/or allowed you to work quicker. Move faders with your fingers during the mix to give it the balance it needs, and use console automation for this if available. This process helped us understand signal flow, and the limitations that engineers before DAWs faced (while crafting some of the best records ever made). It also helped us learn that a mix is a living, breathing thing. You are performing the mix with your fader moves and other automation. There is a tactile feeling that attaches you to this. Now, large-format recording studios (they have a big console, they have the space and gear requirements to live track a large band) aren’t as popular. Hybrid systems (such as having outboard gear, but no console, and making use of your DAW’s hardware inserts) make a lot of sense for space, cost, and other concerns. I think that attempting to simulate this “old school” approach / setup has some benefits for those of us working in a hybrid or purely digital environment. The main benefit being: in a digital audio world filled with endless possibilities and option paralysis, introducing limitations pushes you to think outside the box to creatively solve problems and pave new paths. Limitations foster creativity, and I think this is important when creating music in a digital environment. Whether we are arranging, producing, recording, mixing, or mastering - we are creating music. Additionally, this approach brings me back to the early days of learning and then the following years of working in a primarily analog workflow. It reinforces the tactile feel of working on a mix, and the minimalist mindset of pushing a fader up, doing some light EQ’ing, and saying “this sounds good - I’m moving on.”
There are a couple of other benefits that come out of this workflow that I will try to mention below. Now I’d like to go through how I like to set things up.
The Setup
I like to pretend my DAW is my mixing desk and tape machine, and my plugins are my outboard gear. I like to choose 1-3 reverb plugins and 1-3 delay plugins that I setup as “FX returns.” I set up aux tracks in Pro Tools for each of these with dedicated, named bus inputs, and slide them down to the right as if they were on the end of my console (in Pro Tools I place them right before my mix bus).
Above you’ll notice I have a “Mix Bus” and a “Master Bus.” (the terminology of MIX A comes from the console I learned on - an SSL Duality). In Pro Tools, inserts on an Aux Track are pre-fader, like an Audio Track. Inserts on a Master Fader are post-fader. This means that for a Master Fader, you can do cool stuff like pushing the chorus of a song 1 dB and subsequently hitting any compression or saturation you have inserted a bit harder. This can be a cool thing to do depending on the music. It sort of simulates the “folding up” experienced in the analog domain when you hit a loud section of your mix. Typically, I don’t use any plugins on the mix bus, and the master bus is set up with some favorite, dedicated plugins - perhaps an EQ, a compressor or two, some saturation, etc. I realize the Mix Bus is really just an extra step here that I don’t often need but I like to have the option open for me. Perhaps I want a pre-fader insert. Really what I’m calling the Master Bus is my final mix bus - it’s what is send to my final print.
A little less “old school” and perhaps more live sound, I like to have aux tracks set up so I can sub-mix major elements in the mix - drums, synths, guitars, etc. All of these tracks get a utility style EQ and compressor inserted but inactive. I create “start up” presets for all of my plugins, especially these more utility ones, and save them as the factory default (your DAW milage/terminology may vary) so that way when I get them going they’re at my preferred starting point. And of course all of these aux tracks have a dedicated, named bus input (I cringe when I see someone’s mixing session littered with routing Bus 1-2, Bus 3-4, Bus 33-35, etc.).
Important note! All of this setup is not mixing! I do not do all of this and then jump right into mixing. I create various templates with the above scheme slightly varied depending on style - rock template, metal template, electronic template, etc. When it is time to mix, I allocate time completely separate from mixing time to import tracks, setup my session, and make slight tweaks to the template based on what I’ll be working on. I instantiate utility EQ and compression on pretty much all of my tracks - once again inactive but ready to go - mimicking as if I was working on a console where these would be a touch of a button away. You can also purchase a channel strip plugin - such as something from the Brainworx bx_console series - to be the first insert that each track hits, for a more mimicking-a-console approach. I usually do all of this at a “busy work” time - usually at the end of the day when my ears are not as fresh. I do not need to be wasting valuable mixing time with all of this setup.
The Mixing
Now, when it’s time to mix, you are able to work quickly. This is key to keeping the creative juices flowing while at the same time following the direction of the song and the mix. The snare needs to be a little brighter? There is an EQ on the track ready to go. Lead guitar needs a little reverb? Assign the send on the track, push the fader up.
I try to carry this “analog mindset” with limitations throughout all my mixes. Sometimes you have to break out of this mindset a little bit. For example, when dealing with a dense guitar arrangement, I’ll often end up with 4-5 sub-mixes of various guitar parts for minute tweaking before they hit an “All Guitars” sub-mix. In the analog world this would have been tricky. I use the DAW’s unending technical abilities to my advantage when necessary.
If you’re interested in bringing the tactile feeling in more, and not just imagining it with a mouse, there are a lot of DAW controllers out there with faders to help maximize this workflow.
Some Additional Benefits / Things I Think Are Cool
FX Returns
It’s dependent on the style of the music and sonics of the source material, but most of the time I like to use a main reverb that I send a lot of tracks to (but just a little bit of each) to help give a sense of space to a mix. One of the first things I do when I begin a mix is decide on what this reverb will be. Maybe I will listen to the drums, if the piece has drums, and try to find a room sound that matches the vibe of the recorded drums. Or more often see what will work best with the lead vocal, if there is one. In my analog-mimicking workflow, I may only have 1-2 reverb options (say a plate and a digital reverb box such as a Lexicon PCM). I’ll choose one of these to be my main reverb, and then the other to be a bit of a different flavor - such as something really long or really short depending on the music. Then, that’s it! That’s my reverb for the track. What I have found is that I end up with mixes with a vastly more cohesive sense of space with this approach. I force myself to!
Coming from this idea, what I now do most often is define the main reverb, then make a few that stem from this: a big reverb, a really big reverb, a super short reverb, etc. I forgo the analog mindset a bit here, but limit myself to only use a certain base sound as my reverb vibe for a track. Sure, sometimes a mix will call for a ridiculously different reverb effect at a some time. We can still do that.
Templates
I mentioned before that I’ll create templates ready to go for different styles of music. On this topic I think it’s really fun / cool to expand these templates for different flavors of recording setups. Maybe you have two rock templates - an API and an SSL one - where you throw a bunch of console modeling plugins into the template for the respective brand. Maybe you have two electronic templates - a “clean” one where your FX returns are super clean digital effects and a “vibey” one where your FX returns are old tape emulations or early digital models with aliasing. This all adds to creating a cohesive sound world. And it’s fun!
Closing
Much of what I’ve said here deals with introducing and using limitations in your workflow - a key concept for creativity and problem solving in audio engineering and music creation, and something that I hope to write a dedicated blog post on in the future.
How do you like to set up your mixing sessions? Please leave a comment below. Thanks for reading.